Intriguing narrative structure
Great voice acting and action-packed cutscenes draw you into the story.

The Bad

Loads of bad, overlong quick-time events
Excruciating overemphasis on mediocre set piece events
Ruins the pace by constantly ripping control from you
Poorly executed scripted events lead to unavoidable deaths.

It’s a bloated, often incoherent game, but the most frustrating thing about Resident Evil 6 is that (Chris’s focus on cover shooting aside) it’s not an unimaginative one. It might feel padded at times, but Capcom always has something new to show you after the filler, such as a fresh campaign, another repellent boss form, a surprising enemy type, a co-op vehicle section, or an odd location to explore. Even replaying a chapter from the perspective of your teammate will offer a tweaked weapon set and slightly altered routes. In always trying to offer something more, Resident Evil 6 fails to refine what it has already given you. And whatever else you might say about the game, it achieves something that its predecessor never did: it steps out of Resident Evil 4’s shadow and becomes its own game. Sadly, it’s a game that redefines the series as a loose collection of action scenarios with a shared theme of mild sci-fi horror. It’s a game so eager to please that it can’t settle on an identity. And it’s a game that marks a critical point in the series’ history. Resident Evil might have lost interest in pure horror a while back, but it seems Capcom would rather you were thrilled than afraid.

RE6 presents blockbuster-caliber entertainment, sure, but it also forces you to revisit rough portions of gameplay and rarely challenges a player outside of arbitrary difficulty levels and cheap deaths via phoned-in quick-time events. The unfortunate truth is that Capcom hasn't figured out a new way to terrify gamers in the eight years since RE4. While building on that game's masterful formula of stop-and-pop gunplay is a smart approach, RE6 serves as proof that too many compromises and too much empowerment can ultimately erode what makes Resident Evil, at its core, work.

The game represents a tremendous amount of effort and investment and, for those impressed by such things, Resident Evil 6 may delight. But all the effort in the world won't make up for a lack of vision. This game is blind to imagination and focus. Capcom's uncertainty about the series' identity post-Mikami (and post-Uncharted) is hardcoded into its structure: four campaigns offering different, flawed expressions of that potential. And the inevitable price for this wavering is a lack of coherence. Resident Evil 6 is an unwieldy tribute to the series' past, an uneven expression of its present and an unwelcome indication of its future.

Resident Evil 6 is a truly immense RE title that succeeds as a third-person action shooter, but falls flat on its face as a survival horror game. Yes, times have changed, but if Dead Space can still provide a good balance of scares and set-pieces, then why can't Resi? Here's hoping that Capcom sees the next-generation of consoles as a golden opportunity to take Resident Evil back to its roots. Or perhaps a reboot is in order. Until then, Resident Evil 6 is certainly not a bad game by any means, just a bit of a disappointment. Nonetheless, it'll still get its slimy hooks into you if you let it.

Resident Evil 6 leaves players with the shell of a blockbuster game. It blusters along with massive explosions and insane plot twists, but it lacks a fundamental understanding of why action games are fun. In the end, Resident Evil 6 resembles one of its grotesque mutations — bloated, out of control, and recklessly trying to consume everything around it. Capcom has built a real monster here.

Capcom has loaded an unprecedented amount of content on one disc. Unfortunately, that drive to do it all has created some quality gaps. The game occasionally pulls the camera away from the action to show off a new goal or destination, leaving you open to blind cheap shots. The most annoying bug I encountered makes a boss unbeatable during Leon’s co-op campaign, marring the otherwise excellent climactic battles. Capcom promises some of these issues will be fixed with a day one patch, but we reviewed the game on the disc.

Over the years, the tone of the Resident Evil series has morphed from a George Romero horror flick to Michael Bay summer blockbuster. That metamorphosis into insane action is front and center in Resident Evil 6, and bringing a buddy along for the chaos is great fun. The game’s minor flaws don’t hold back the decadent experience from being an unhinged, flaming rollercoaster ride.

There's more content and variety here than in any other entry in the series, and its stories - while a little too goofy to really take seriously - are nonetheless fascinating, particularly for those of us who've watched these characters grow and develop over the years...RE6 is a strange experience, to be sure - but more importantly, it's an unforgettable one. [Nov 2012, p.56]

4players review is brutal. They say there is nothing positive to din in the Chris campaign and Jake's is about as bad. basically all the things people have been complaining about with the demo are in te full game and you can add to that even more problems like one of the worst stories RE has ever seen.

The only thing remotely close to CoD RE6 gets is the fact that Chris is in a squadron and it can get a little BRO SQUAD BRO ESCORT EXPLOSION BRO occasionally, but not to the point where you'd consider it a large influence.

Looks like it used to actually mean something. I would say the turning point was GTAIV, lending more credence to my belief that GTAIV is the worst game product this generation. Or maybe it doesn't, but it does make my hate feel just a little big better.

4players review is brutal. They say there is nothing positive to din in the Chris campaign and Jake's is about as bad. basically all the things people have been complaining about with the demo are in te full game and you can add to that even more problems like one of the worst stories RE has ever seen.

This is the opposite of what people in OT who have played the game have been saying.

Based on what I played of the demo, the game pretty much has lost any horror pretense and is a straight up action shooter now. Even Leon's story, which is supposed to be horrorlike, feels like this too. I'm pretty sure most survival horror games don't let you elbow drop zombies.

Oh this is going to be a fun ride... After playing it this doesn't mean much to me, but it'll be interesting to watch. This game is INCREDIBLY polarizing, though surprised quite a few GAF'ers who hated the demo warmed up to the game in the OT while playing it.

This is both a good and bad game, it does some things amazingly and other things terribly. It has better single player and co-op than RE5, though, and quite a bit of content.